and let those idiots blather away.
The story I sent you last time, ‘Meat Boy,’ is not a piece of reportage, but it reads like one. It is absolutely true that some of Liquorland’s totally corrupt and inhuman Party cadres feast on little boys. I hear that someone has been sent down to investigate, and if someday all this comes to light, it will rock the world. In the future, who but your disciple could write a piece of reportage about this major story? With the explosive material I have at hand, tell me, who has a claim to arrogance, if not me?
I have heard nothing from
Our Liu Yan is a deckle-faced, glowering’ woman, and could be the ‘pale-faced glowering’ woman you recall. Her freckles might be the byproduct of several illicit pregnancies. She told me once that she is the most fertile of soils, and gets pregnant by any man who comes in contact with her. She also said that the unborn fetuses she leaves behind are invariably snatched away to be consumed by hospital personnel. I’ve heard that the nutritional value of a six- or seven-month-old fetus is very high, and that makes sense. The fetus of a deer is widely known to be a high-potency tonic, isn’t it? An embryonic egg has high nourishment value, hasn’t it?
I’m including my most recent work, ‘Child Prodigy,’ with this letter. It is written in the style of ‘demonic realism.’ After you’ve given it a critical reading, please forward it to
Wishing you
Happy writing,
Your disciple
Li Yidou
III
Child Prodigy, by Li Yidou
Gentle reader, not long ago I wrote a story for you about a meat child. In it I took pains to paint a picture of a little boy wrapped in red cloth. Perhaps you can recall his extraordinary eyes: mere slits through which a cold but mature glare emanated. They were the typical eyes of a conspirator. Yet they grew not in the face of a conspirator, but were inlaid in the face of a boy not quite three feet tall, which is why they are so unforgettable, and why they had such a shocking effect on a decent farmer in the Liquorland suburbs, Jin Yuanbao. Within the confines of that medium-length story it was impossible to delve deeply into the child’s background, so he appears as a full-blown stock image: the body of a not-quite three-foot-tall boy with a shock of bristly hair, the eyes of a conspirator, a pair of large, fleshy ears, and a gravelly voice. He is a little boy, nothing more, nothing less.
This story unfolds in the Special Purchasing Section of a Culinary Academy, beginning at dusk. Gentle reader, ‘our story, in fact, is already well underway.’
The moon was out that night, because we needed it to be. A big red moon rose slowly from behind the artificial hill at the Culinary Academy, its rosy beams slanting in through the double-paned windows like a pink waterfall and turning their faces soft and gentle. They were all little boys, and if you have read my ‘Meat Boy,’ you know who I’m talking about. The little demon was one of them, and would soon be in the position of their leader, or their despot. We shall see.
The boys had cried themselves out before the sun went down behind the mountain. Their faces were tear- streaked, their voices hoarse, all but the little demon, of course. You’d never catch him crying! Back while the other boys were crying their eyes out, he paced the floor like an overgrown goose, hands clasped behind his back as he circled the large room with its lovely scenery. Every once in a while he landed a well-placed kick on the backside of a bawling child. That invariably produced a high-pitched squeal, followed by muted sobs. His foot was transformed into a cure for the weeps. Eventually, he kicked all thirty-one children. And in the midst of sobs from the smallest boy among them, they saw the lovely moon leaping about on the artificial hill like a proud red steed.
Crowding up to the window, they grasped the sill and gazed outside. Those stuck behind the front row held on to the shoulders ahead of them. A fat little boy with a snotty nose raised a chubby finger and pointed skyward.
‘Mama Moon,’ he whimpered, ‘Mama Moon…’ One of the other boys smacked his lips and said: ‘It’s Auntie Moon, not Mama Moon. Auntie Moon.’ A sneer worked its way down the face of the little demon, who screeched like an owl, sending shivers down the boys’ spines as they turned to see what was wrong. What they saw was the little demon squatting atop the artificial hill, irradiated by red moonbeams. His red clothes looked like a fireball. The man-made waterfall on the hillside shimmered like red satin as it cascaded beautifully and continuously into the pool at the foot of the hill. Water splashed noisily like strings of cherries.
The children were no longer looking at the moon; instead, they huddled together and gaped at him in stupefaction.
Children,’ he said in a low voice, ‘prick up your ears and listen to what your sire has to say. That gizmo, that thing that looks like a proud red steed, is not a mama and it’s not an auntie. It’s a ball, a celestial being, one that revolves around us, and its name is simply “moon”!’
The children looked at him uncomprehendingly.
He jumped down off the artificial hill, and as he did, his baggy red clothes billowed in the wind, transformed into a pair of grotesque wings.
Clasping his hands behind him, he paced back and forth in front of the children. From time to time he wiped his mouth with his sleeve or spit on the glossy stone floor. Suddenly he stopped, raised an arm that was thin as a goat’s leg, and waved it in the air.
‘Listen to me, children,’ he said sternly. ‘You have never been human beings, not since the day you were born. Your parents sold you, like pigs or goats! So from now on, I’ll stomp anyone who cries for his mommy or daddy!’
He shook his clawlike hand and roared at the top of his lungs. The moon lit up his pale little face, from which two green lights emerged. Two of the boys burst into tears.
‘No crying!’ he screamed.
Reaching into the cluster of children, he dragged out the two crying boys and drove his fist into each of their little bellies, sending them thudding to the floor, where they rolled around like basketballs.
He laid down the law: ‘I’ll do the same to anybody I catch crying!’
The huddle of children grew tighter. None dared to cry.
‘Just wait,’ he said. ‘Leave the search for brightness up to me.’
He immediately commenced a search of the strange and very large room, hugging the walls like a prowling cat. Near the door he stopped and looked up at four lamp cords hanging in a row from the ceiling. He reached up, but the cords were a good three feet from the tip of his middle finger. He jumped a couple of times, but even with plenty of spring in his legs, he barely halved the distance. So, moving away from the wall, he dragged over a willow tree welded out of iron, climbed to the top, then grabbed the lamp cords and gave them a hard tug. With a crackle, all the lights in the room snapped on. There were neon lights, incandescent lamps, tungsten lamps, white lights, blue lights, red lights, green lights, and yellow lights. There were lights on the walls, lights in the ceiling, lights on the artificial hill, and lights on the artificial trees. The lights were blinding and multi-hued, like heaven and earth in a fairy-tale world. Forgetting their miseries and their worries, the children clapped and shouted joyously.
The little demon curled his lip derisively as he marveled over the masterpiece he had created. Then he went to the corner, where he picked up a ring of brass bells and shook them vigorously. Peals rang out, drawing the boys’ rapt attention. He wrapped the bells, which seemed to have been put there just for him, around his waist, spit out a mouthful of phlegm, and said:
Children, do you know where all this light comes from? No, you don’t. You’re from remote, backward villages where you smash rocks to make fire, so of course you don’t know where it comes from. I’ll tell you. The source of this light is called electricity.’
The children listened without making a peep. The red moon had receded from the room, leaving behind a row of gleaming eyes. The two boys who had been knocked to the ground climbed to their feet.
Is electricity good?’ he asked.
‘Yes, it is!’ the boys replied in unison.
